In the early hours of October 28th, 1940, the Italian ambassador Emanuele Grazzi delivered an ultimatum to Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas at his residence in Kifisia.
The Italian government demanded the free passage of its troops through Greek territory, in order to occupy strategic positions within the broader theatre of war that had already engulfed Europe. The answer was short — and final.
“Greeks,
now we shall prove whether we are worthy of our ancestors and of the freedom they secured for us.
Let the entire Nation rise united; fight for your Homeland, for your women and children, and for our sacred traditions.
Now is the struggle for all.”
— Ioannis Metaxas
In that moment, Metaxas gave voice not merely to a government, but to the collective conscience of a nation. His refusal captured the Greek spirit of defiance — a sentiment that would soon appear in bold print across the front pages of every newspaper, in a single word: “OXI” — “No.”
From the autumn of 1940 to the summer of 1941, Greece experienced a war that extended far beyond the battlefield. The struggle unfolded in images, in sound, in the printed word — across newspapers, songs, theatre, and the fine arts — as the creative life of the nation became an act of solidarity and hope.
Patriotic emotion turned into a torrent of expression. Cartoonists and illustrators filled the press with sharp humour and satirical depictions of fascism. Painters and sculptors captured scenes of courage and endurance, while young artists of the Athens School of Fine Arts — Tassos, Katraki, Grammatikopoulos — printed striking posters that transformed resistance into visual poetry.
Music, theatre, and radio became instruments of unity. Popular songs and satirical revues mocked the invader, while Karagiozis, the beloved shadow-theatre hero, fought his own symbolic battles on stage. Soldiers in the trenches sang, wrote letters, and preserved small fragments of their experience — photographs, song sheets, leaflets — the intimate archives of a nation at war.
Art did not idealize conflict; it reimagined it as communion and moral strength. Culture itself became a form of resistance — a spiritual and aesthetic front through which Greeks affirmed their freedom and humanity.
The thematic exhibition “Images of ’40: Culture and Patriotic Expression” explores this rich cultural landscape of wartime Greece. Through artworks, posters, music manuscripts, press materials, soldiers’ objects and ephemeral documents, it traces how artists and citizens alike translated war into image, sound, and word.
This is not a story of battles, but a portrait of a society that fought and created at the same time — a people who answered violence with art, fear with song, and threat with imagination and unity.
The exhibition contains items from the following institutions:
